The Queensway runs through it

By the 1950s, Queen Street West had already been extended past St. Joseph’s Hospital to meet Parkside Drive, but the plans for the new Lakeshore Expressway (now the Gardiner) ended up taking 18 acres off the south end of High Park to construct an entirely new roadway to join it up with the stub of Queen Street previously laid out on the other side of Grenadier Pond.

These photos show the cylindrical tower of the Parkdale Pumping Station on the right, St. Joseph’s Hospital in the centre, and the houses and storefronts on the left that were demolished to build the bridge over Parkside Drive.

The porch at the very far left of the 1956 photograph belongs to 11 Parkside Drive, which is now the first address you’ll find on that street. You can see its gable through the streetcar shelter in the 2012 photo.

From the streetcar stop at Parkside Drive looking east along The Queensway, 2012

Until 1956, westbound streetcars would travel down a bridge at the foot of Roncesvalles and west along Lakeshore Road, south of the railroad tracks. The development of the Queensway included the right-of-way you see here, which moved this traffic north to make way for the new expressway.